Nike+ Human Race 10K Race Report

I decided to do the Nike+ Human Race just a couple days before. Kind of a 'speed check' in the midst of my trail ultra season and to accompany my girl Olivia who was running with a friend from work. She hadn't been running a lot over the summer after having to drop out of running the Big Sur Marathon with a stress fracture and the subsequent healing and then getting back into the swing of things. I was curious to see how I would do as last year by this time my body was broken down and wracked with injury from mileage and my old heel-crashing ways.

This year, mostly thanks to a more 'on the toes' running style recommended by my physio Sophia at Active Life in North Van, I seemed to be picking up speed right through my long distance stuff, and not really feeling anything serious as far as soreness. This despite ditching all cushioning and support in my shoes, first switching to exclusively racing flats and I was now toeing the line in Puma H-Street casual shoes.

I have to give props to these shoes. I had heard about them when I first changed my style but I was a bit hesitant to completely forgo cushioning. After a spring and summer burning through flats like they were disposable using them for long runs ect... I decided to try on some of my old light weight trainers. I jogged just a little but and it felt like I had balloons strapped to my feet. And we're talking 11 ounce shoes not some tanks. I ordered the H-Street online from www.puma.com (they are impossible to find anywhere else at least in the synthetic upper) and at first they were a real shock to the system as you really feel your landing at first. But I got in a tempo run in them on the seawall before the race (which I hadn't done since the spring as I've been on the trails doing heart rate based tempos) and dropped my pace on a 12 km run from 4:15 in the spring, to 3:58 now! There have definitely been fitness increases but these shoes totally allow your feet to work as they naturally should and I felt a good kind of soreness in my feet after the run like they had had a good workout, something I have never really experienced or at least noticed before. If you are not a heel crasher and land softly I really recommend these shoes, especially if you experience tight calves from running as these allow your achilles tendon to go through its whole range of motion. I don't even like running in flats anymore as I can feel the cushioning and odd shape pressing against my foot.

Please Puma make these shoes more available and do not discontinue them again they are the greatest shoes ever made, way more durable than flats and not even 6 ounces!

So anyway back to the race. Among the 5000 people who showed up, I was suprised to see some friends from Club Fat Ass there; Tim and Betty but stranger yet Baldwin (apparently it was his third run of the day so makes more sense now). Also less suprisingly some VFAC'ers Rory (whose house I had way too many beers at the night before), Mark and helping out as volunteers Matt and Trudy.

The start line was obviously different from other local 10K's I have been to. Not the same Timex series crowd, more like a mix of everyone like the Sun Run. Standing out amongst the crowd all in the same red shirt was a group of African looking guys right up front. I had been at the package pickup when one of them came in to get 28 packages at once all comped, all I picked up was they were from back east and he had an accent. They looked very fit and I thought to myself how there's another 28 Kenyans on top of the local guys to kick my ass. Even at the start any comments from the hosts about elite runners were directed right at them.

Turns out they were perhaps Nike employees or athletes from other sports or something as they all took off right in front at the beginning but only a couple were serious contenders and I don't know if they were even actually with that group. 500 metres in on the Cambie bridge I started overtaking them and all the other over-enthusiatic starters, of which there were many at this race. I went through the first km in 3:32 but was starting to feel some bad effects from the night before. I knew it was not going to be a fantastic run at this point but I knew I could still PR (my 10K PR was set at the Sun Run when I got a yellow bib, tried to sneak into the blue section, then when I was sent back the yellow was full for an hour and they were directing yellows into the green section) so I backed off slightly a little bit more into my comfort zone.

As I came around the corner onto Quebec street I felt something whipping against my left shin. My double-knotted shoelace had come undone and worse yet me chip was tied to it since Nike did not provide the zip-strips to attach it for some reason. I couldn't risk the chip falling off so I was forced to stop and tie it. As I was busy tying my shoe Rory ran past, I ran up beside him to see how he was doing, then pushed on. As we turned onto the seawall I heard Chris from VFAC taunting Rory. He was into his 8th beer polishing off the leftovers from the party with some buddies from Calgary and was running beside Rory, beer in hand giving him a hard time. "If I can run with you, you're not running fassht enough..." he slurred.

The new section on the seawall twisted and turned quite a bit and went through a field for a few hundred meters and it seems the pace slowed for everyone there. I sped back up through the third quarter of the race and was starting to feel quite a bit better. The last quarter of the race was tougher though. After coming over the Burrard Street bridge and turning onto Pacific, I saw one of the Kenyan looking guys from back east a few hundred meters up ahead. He stuck out like a sore thumb as he was holding his red race shirt in his hand (they had the bib number on the front so you had to wear/have them so it was a sea of red Nike shirts) so I focused on him as my goal to pass. About a block later he looked over his shoulder back at me. I guess he became as focused on me not passing him as I was on passing as he kept looking over his shoulder back at me, but he was fading and I soon caught him. It didn't help that he kept turning around and looking at me, looking more and more panicked as I pulled closer. And it was strange he seemed so focused on me considering there were others passing him during this time. As I pulled past him he picked it up a bit and started to match me stride for stride. Although I am much shorter than he was I stretched out my stride as I have been working on since I came to the conclusion that I can't really over-stride landing on the balls of my feet. I pulled away most importantly with ease as I knew there was a decent hill around the corner. "Shit, shit, shit!!!" he muttered when he had to drop off.

Once I came around the corner onto Cambie, the finish line was in sight. But the short hill to start the race was now a long and grueling climb to the finish, at least by 10K standards, as they walked us down the hill to the start line from the finish area, but the finish line was at the top of the hill. I held on to my pace as much as I could and managed to keep passing people through here,until the last 100m or so. A guy came sprinting up suddenly, I don't know if he was behind me passing people for a while or what but he just laid on a vicious sprint. He came by so quick he probably had 10m on me before I realised what had happened. I turned it on as much as I could, matched his pace within a few strides, and started reeling him in a few strides later, but I would have needed another 50m to get back out in front of him.

My final time was 38:07, good for 26th overall (in the Vancouver race). And the first time in a race with over 50 people I didn't get 'chicked'!!! Not the sub 37:00 I was hoping for - definitely have some work to do on my short road race effort level and I can drop a lot more timewise, even given my current level of fitness - but a solid PR nonetheless on a course which though similar (but in reverse) of the easy Sun Run in many spots is actually quite a tough course. And not going to a party and over-indulging the night before then spending the afternoon at a barbeque feasting would probably help. Especially given the cruel uphill finishing sprint trying to fend off 'the kick'. I almost puked. But then Perdita Felicien handed me my finishers medal after I collected myself, which was a whole lot nicer than the medal itself (nothing against it - but it's just another one in the box).